Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a peripheral, and more particularly to a duplex peripheral capable of processing both a large-size document and a small-size document.
Related Art
FIG. 1 shows a schematic view of a conventional copier 200. Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional copier 200 usually comprises a scanning device 230 and a printing device 240. The scanning device 230 comprises a flatbed scanning unit 220 and a sheet-fed scanning unit 210 so that the user can perform a flatbed scan operation and a sheet-fed scan operation. The flatbed scanning unit 220 can utilize a movable scanning module 224 to scan a bound book, and the sheet-fed scanning unit 210 can scan a plurality of documents D at one time. However, the sheet-fed scanning unit 210 is disposed on an upper cover 222 of the flatbed scanning unit 220, wherein the upper cover 222 also functions as a document storage tray for storing the documents D scanned by the sheet-fed scanning unit 210. The drawback of such the design is that the user cannot utilize the sheet-fed scan of the small-size hard document because the small-size hard document cannot be smoothly transported past the curved transporting passage. In addition, the gap between the rollers on two sides of a sensor 212 in the sheet-fed scanning unit 210 is too large, and the small-size hard document cannot be transported smoothly.
In addition, the market-available copier usually uses a bulky caterpillar-type sheet-feeding mechanism, which is not adapted to the transportation of the hard document, such as a certificate, a card or the like. The user only can perform the flatbed scan operation to scan the hard document, and it becomes more troublesome when the duplex images of the hard document need to be scanned. For example, if the user wishes to copy a front side image and a reverse side image of an identity card on the same side of a sheet, the identity card cannot be transported in the sheet passage due to the U-shaped sheet passage even if each of the sheet-fed scanning unit and the flatbed scanning unit has one scanning module. Thus, the user still needs to perform the scan by using the flatbed scanning unit. In this manner, the user needs to firstly open the upper cover, then place the identity card, then close the upper cover, and then press the confirmation key to copy the first side of the identity card on the sheet. Then, the sheet printed with the first side is re-placed into the correct tray with the correct side facing upwards. Next, the identity card is flipped over, and is placed onto the platen at another position, which is close to but does not overlap with the previous position so that the second side can be copied. Such processes are very complicated and tend to fail. It is more time and labor consuming when a lot of such documents are to be copied.